Dreamflood
by Aurnien
Summary: ROTJ AU. The Son of the Suns returns to his homeworld only to become submerged in an increasingly surrealistic flood of dreams and visions. Past and present unite to reveal the secret of his heritage: the Skywalkers are native to Tatooine...
1. Prologue

**Dreamflood**

**by Aurnien**

_In every torchlight flicker flaming dreams…_

- Albrecht Haushofer, "XXVI: Vision of the Torch"

**Summary: **The Emperor Palpatine has discovered a way to destroy his opponents and gain a younger, stronger, apprentice in the son of Skywalker, all in one stroke; but no one could have predicted the revelations Tatooine has in store for the Skywalkers. Trapped in a collective dreamworld with Vader by a Force-fed sandstorm after rescuing Han Solo, the Rebels and Imperials must learn to work together in a quest to help Vader balance the Force by discovering himself--and to do that he must accept the heritage his mother could not bring herself to speak of...his heritage, by blood, as one of the Sandpeople.

**Author's Notes:** I have occasionally come across fics that portray Anakin and Shmi Skywalker as galactic nomads, or from the Unknown Regions, or from some other planet before arriving on Tatooine when Anakin was three. These never seemed plausible to me. Something in Anakin and Luke and Shmi tells me that they belong in the desert, that Skywalkers belong on Tatooine. I started researching Tatooine and its natives on Wookiepedia and and found enough to support my ideas.

I think the Tusken Raiders captured Shmi, specifically, for a reason that may or may not have been prompted by Palpatine but would have occurred to them anyway. I think Anakin's rage and skill as a warrior could have a genetic basis, and I think the Tuskens have a lot of experience in learning how to control rage. I think Shmi was just a little too compassionate for a non-Jedi to not have been touched by the Maker. I think the prophecy of the Chosen One and the virgin birth are a little too convenient to be the product of random chance. In short, I think that the Skywalkers are Tusken Raiders, and I believe that this idea could be actually be unspoken canon.

This fic is an ROTJ AU, taking the idea and running with it so that _Star Wars_ ends on Tatooine, as it began on Tatooine. (I mean really, wtf is with Endor? It's so random.) It's inspired by the book _Labyrinth_, written by someone whose name I don't remember, and is meant to be an exploration of both my idea and Vader's mind. Updates will be slow, because I revise my writing quite a lot before posting it, and I'm also writing a Superman fic.

Please look at the cover I made for this fic, to be seen here: www.free-webspace.biz/aurnien/misc/dfcover.jpg

I guess I should say, just to make it clear, that the girl in this prologue is Shmi. Bonus points to whoever knows who An'akk'akrin is.

* * *

**Dreamflood**

**prologue**

_O wind, rend open the heat,  
cut apart the heat,  
rend it to tatters.  
Cut the heat -  
plough through it,  
turning it on either side  
of your path._

- H.D.: "Heat"

_63 BBY, Valley of the Spirits, Tatooine._

Darkness. The white heat which burns the sand during the day is dissipating, radiating up from the canyon walls and blowing off in great sheets of dust from the dunes, shifting them, moving them over the desert in advancing endless waves. Hidden life emerges from the desert at night, small mammals which conserve energy by sleeping in the daytime, slithering scuttling reptilian things searching for food, insects and sand-mites. Sentients hunting their prey for pay, or out in the heart of the nascent settlements seeking a fulfillment they can never really find.

Cocooned in the deep shadow of a rhyolitic ridge, snug in her parents' tent on the outskirts of the tribal camp, a native girl-child dreams.

A small boy stands determined against the hot wind, shielding her from the worst of its blast while she works. Her small frustrated fingers fumble with banthahide leather straps, trying to piece together the wrappings she will wear on her naming-day. She has to put it together quickly, for it is almost morning, with dawn-fingers streaking the sky red and orange bright against the trembling beginnings of scudding clouds, and the naming ceremony is nigh. But she cannot figure out how to put the pieces together, she is missing something vital and does not know what it is.

Frustrated and near despair, she wraps a thick band of leather over the internal skullpiece that holds the woman-mask in place, struggling to keep it stretched in place as she pulls it around to the other side. Her arms are trembling with the effort and it slip-snaps out of her hand; tears spring to her eyes.

_Hurry up, _the boy says placidly. His voice is indifferent, inundated with his natural inclination to command, but despite his words he will wait for her to finish. The heated wind rips at his lightdark hair, radiant blue eyes follow the movement of her hands. He and the girl-child are close in age, not yet nine year-cycles or eighteen seasons, and the slick bones and muscles under his tender skin have not stopped growing.

Yet he stands determined against the raging suns-driven wind, to protect her, defying the elements as no adult would dare to do. They are in this together, as brother and sister, father and daughter, mother and son; she imagines she can see their shared blood streaking through his veins. The fact of their relationship is indisputable, for only family members are allowed to view each others' faces, and theirs are naked and bare, scrubbed by the sandy wind. They will protect each other with a passion, but their respective efforts are worth nothing right now.

_I can't, _she sniffles. _ I don't know how._

_We have little time, _he reminds her._ Don't waste it._

The girl-child turns pleading eyes to his, trembling with the intimacy of their naked gaze. _ An'akk'akrin, will you help me? _

He frowns fiercely, mulling over her question. Perhaps he will; after all, he is to look after her. Perhaps he won't; it is not his duty to do her duty for her. Sand trickles down the streaming river of his hair.

_Maybe it's not for you,_ he suggests at last.

_What do you mean? _she asks, but the boy-child is already cocking his head to listen to something far off in the distance. She listens too, but nothing enters her ears but the gritty sound of sand carried by the roiling wind passing, diverted on either side of her by An'akk'akrin's legs. _What is it?_

He does not respond, but turns his face to the side, into the loud rattling wind. Shimmering with sand, his hair whips back into his face. _No! _she cries, reaching for his legs to bring him back, but she is anchored to the sand and cannot move far enough. _ An'akk'akrin! _

The dust-storm intensifies. Nothing is audible now beyond the screaming wind; his name escapes her mouth and is stolen away by the sand-rivulets streaming from his hair. The air is tangible, hot and dry, saturated with sand particles, a heavy weight pressing her away from her companion. She cannot see beyond his blackened silhouette. Heart pounding with fear, she strains to reach him, but is distracted as the wind rips a leather strap from her small, weak hand. The woman-mask is already gone, and as she watches, the rest of the cloth and leather rise into the air, stolen away by billowing sand.

She turns back to An'akk'akrin as he turns back to her. His face has been scoured clean by the hot wind, gleaming white bone exposed and pitted by bouncing sand particles, a horrific skull-mask framed against the sandy air by his hair flaring out into a helmet-shape. The scream claws its way from her belly, forces its way out through her sand-caked lips, and is utterly lost in the howls of the wind, but she keeps on screaming and screaming and

wakes up with her screams vibrating through her pounding head, mouth gasping open, until she realizes that the bone-shattering sound is coming from outside her parents' brittle bantha-hide tent.

The sharp, acrid scent of smoke drags her further out of her sleep-gummed state into apprehensive awareness. "Mother?" she whimpers, reaching out a pale nude hand. But there is no response—her family is gone.

Outside the screaming continues, filtered through metallic breathing-masks, punctuated by shouts and harsh noise from raw voices, sprinkled with the unmistakable wet splat of gaderffis penetrating flesh and the high-pitched whine of blaster rifles. Singed air trickles into her nostrils as a particularly loud shot bangs by the tent.

Paralysed by the iron band of fear squeezing her heart in its dragon-claws, the girl-child huddles beneath her rough blankets, wishing in her most secret heart for the battle to go away, to be consumed by the burning twin suns. Such wishes, she knows, are not befitting of a Ghorfa; her people are destined for bloody greatness, particularly those of her own tribe; cowardliness is repugnant to them. Her family is outside, among the murderous raiders, while she cowers in here against the wild fury of the sand-storm raid. When it is over she will surely be punished; the elders will know her wish, for they always know, and she will be beaten, or left behind, sacrificed to the thirsty arid sands.

She is still fogged with the residue of her nightmare when there is an explosion of sound, rocking her backwards into the wall, white lights burst behind her eyelids and she claps her hands to her shattered ears. Stunned into submission, she squeezes her eyes shut tight against the storm and shoves herself back into the wall as far as it will stretch, curling up imagining herself a tiny sand-mite safe and cool in the dunes.

She screams when she feels on her skin the storm breezing open the tent flap and snagging her arm in an iron grip.

"An'akk'akrin!" erupts rhyolitic from her volcano throat, the name of her brother father son from the nightmare, and the claws digging into her arm tighten painfully, some hardness cracks across her cheek, setting her face on fire. Her vision is clearing, white fire fading into hazy blurry shapes, sharpening into the silhouette of an human crouching in front of her, an enormous male with a bestial snarl on his pitted ugly face. Growling something in a harsh tongue, he barks with laughter when she doesn't respond, and yanks at her flopping wrist.

The girl-child cannot move, she blinks away the lingering whiteness in her vision, transfixed by the outlander human's face, his starlit demon skin. His is the first face she has seen other than those of her parents and sister, his kind come to the desert in falling stars that burn in the sky and hatch like krayt eggs once they have landed on the desert floor, they fight amongst themselves and disrupt the lives of the Ghorfa and the Jawas who were once one race. They come from the sky, from other suns

_"I'll visit them _all_ one day," An'akk'akrin swears_

down to disrupt the way of the desert, their faces and hands shamefully bare. The desert weathers them like stone, marks them for its own, one day (the elders say) it will claim them all.

The mark on her cheek flares with heat, prompting a cold river of realization trickling down her spine. She wears neither her child-wrappings nor the woman-mask she constructed in her dream: her face is nude before the outlander.

It is a sentence of exile and death bound together.

"No! _No!_ " she screams, tugging to free herself from the outlander's stone hand, to no avail. He is a grown man, and she is only a weak child; he laughs like rock cracking and drags her through river-sand outside, picks her up and throws her over his shoulder, cold fingers almost penetrating the sacred flesh of her thigh. Flailing her limbs makes no difference and she can no longer hear her own shrill, thin screams through the roiling blood slamming through her ears.

Jounced, jolted, brain shaken in her skull, the girl-child sees out of the corner of her eye her mother's woman-mask, watches helplessly the woman running toward her and the outlander, watches her father hold her back. Above the crackling of fire and her own shrieking, his filtered raging voice whips past her on the heated wind: "_She is outcast now!_ "

Tears swell into her eyes, her vision blurs to black and white and flame. Smoke billows up to obscure the stars; the camp is burning.

Ripped away from all she has ever known, she screams and screams. She does not understand the word the outlander keeps on snarling to her, but she will come to know it more intimately than any other word in the harsh language he speaks.

_Slave_.


	2. Part I Prologue

**Author's Note:** This is the introductory-part-type-thing to Part I. Depending on what I decide later, there will be two or three parts, and god only knows what next. Don't worry, the great majority of the first part won't be nearly as weird as this and the previous prologue. (About the last section in this: yes, I've changed the ROTJ timeline slightly. Luke visits Yoda, and finds out that Leia is his sister, before going to Tatooine.)

Does anybody know a good way to make breaks between parts without having to resort to line breaks? I hate those things but FFN always deletes anything else. I had to upload the prologue about five or ten times to figure out the formatting.

Thanks to **Lieutenant K. Colwell**, **Tanydwr**, and **FireChildSlytherin5** for reviewing!

* * *

**Dreamflood**

**Part One Prologue**

_Would you coerce it to some slavery?_

_It hisses, sputters, when it's held in bounds._

_The torch is flickering. The world—will be ablaze._

- Albrecht Haushofer, "XXVI: Vision of the Torch"

* * *

_4 ABY, Middle Core._

Space.

Faint winking stars deepset into an ebony face with no features and a million million eyes. The absence of organic molecules, nothingness paralyzed by unseen radiation, black and cold and still. Devoid of sound or life, the void stares back at you if you stare into it for too long. Whichever way you face, you're always falling down.

The Lady _Executor_ slices through the empty black curtain of space in silence, great engines glowing hellfire crimson. In the interstellar void she drives toward her destiny, a massive arrowhead cast at her commander's enemies.

Inside the _Executor_, her commander kneels to his own master.

"There is a disturbance in the Force," he tells Darth Sidious.

He angles his mask up, stretching black plexisteel springs and leather padding, watching the flickering blue avatar of his master's sunken withered face. The dark Force roils within him, curving around his elemental dried-up heart in a demonic comforting manner, stretching his senses and permeating his bones with power.

This moment is important, for he needs advice, and though they have grown apart his master is still the one he turns to in his weakness, as it has always been.

"Yes. I have felt it also," says Sidious. "Young Skywalker is in despair. He treads the edge of the dark side recklessly." He falls silent for a moment, contemplating. "This may be the opportunity we seek, my friend."

"I agree. We should act now, while he is weak."

"Yet his weakness disturbs you, does it not?" Sidious's powerful gaze penetrates the opaque eye-guards of his mask, even through the innumerable light-years that separate them from each other, locking eyes with Vader. "I can taste your fear."

Such a statement twenty-three years ago or more would have sent a cold frightened snake scratching up his spine, word-tail coiling around his heart in a tangible display of Sidious's immense power. But after twenty-three years, even though their conversations are marked by the scent of Vader's respect and awe for his master, he is no longer afraid of Sidious. He is intimately familiar with Sidious's power now, he has spent twenty-three years entangled with it, learning its use and devouring its spirit. It's not Sidious he's afraid of. His own manifestation of the power crashes through him now, feeding his hatred and his rage: he did not wish to have his furious terror laid open and exposed to the cold void like this.

The silent nameless fear sliding along his bones does not belong in Vader, it should not be there for Sidious to pick out like a slick metal sliver underneath an adamantine fingernail. The hot taste of anger scalds his tongue and heats his scarred flesh.

"Yes, my master," he bites out.

Sidious smiles cold and hard.

"You will go to him and bring him to me. Only together can we turn him to the dark side."

"He is on Tatooine," protests Vader before he can confine the words, further evidence of his debilitating fear.

Wrinkled lips curl, expressing the disgust of the one controlling all the strings.

"I see," he says softly, "you have learned little from me. Let this be a lesson, then. Go to Skywalker's homeworld, my apprentice, and conquer your fear. Harness it--it is as powerful as your rage and hatred. Anchor it in the dark side."

"Yes, my master," snarls Vader.

"Let your own lesson be a lesson for the boy as well," his dark master continues. "Only when you have mastered yourself will you be able to expose the darkness in his heart."

Once there was a time when he had welcomed Sidious's teachings, touched the live wire of the dark power to his own false nerve endings and absorbed the lessons whole. He chafes under them now, for there is little left he can learn from Sidious; in tacit silence they have separated, drifted physically and emotionally into the physical and spiritual distance.

"What of the Death Star?" he asks, for a distraction from the lesson. These little verbal games they play, distractions and misdirections and pretended misunderstandings, keep them from going too far apart. He has the feeling that they will be struggling in one of these games very soon, perhaps over the son of Skywalker. To win Vader must needs master himself first—as, of course, his master now advises. Perhaps Sidious has already won the first round.

"I will meet you and the boy there and together we will oversee the final stages of construction." For a moment smug victory is etched in the lines of Sidious's face, visible only to Vader, who knows him well; then he settles deeper into the black cowl. "Everything is going according to my plan. Once we have young Skywalker, we will crush the Rebellion and then we shall have peace."

A cold wellspring slithers up Vader's spine: he last heard those words twenty-three years ago, as a portent of great change. What destiny lies ahead, at Tatooine?

He swallows the fear rising in his gorge and bows his head to his master's fading avatar.

Sometimes he can see the future, in dreams and visions. But as he draws on the dark Force now, kneeling still in the empty chamber, it is cold and silent, turning away from him.

Gritting his teeth against his welling emotions Vader rises, strides into his chambers. He has work to do now, work that will set in motion the destiny of the galaxy.

Flicking on the private, portable holocomm in his hand, he waits a long moment for the response, reflecting on the necessity of his personal involvement with the business on Tatooine. It does not seem wise to visit his homeworld a third time, but his son is there on the Force-forsaken dustball, paralyzed by pain and despair. Vader senses the boy's need for a father and though he is reluctant to return to Tatooine, he cannot resist his son's call. His duty as a father and as a Sith take precedence over his fear.

His dark master is, as always, right.

"Hi, Uncle Dee," his agent's voice interrupts from the comm nestled in his black-gloved palm. "What's up?"

"There has been a change of plans," he tells the flickering blue avatar. "I will be joining you. Capture the smuggler to use as leverage and draw the Rebels away from the Hutts, into the desert."

"Do you want me to unfreeze the smuggler?"

"I leave that to your discretion. Keep the Rebels isolated and occupied until I arrive."

Sidious will have an agent on Tatooine as well, he knows, for it is one of the things they do not speak of, they plot and pit their agents against one another when they have different means or ends in mind. He must go to Tatooine and capture his son, that much is certain, but there is momentous change riding the Force-winds and Vader must be prepared for anything. "Do not let the Emperor's Hand interfere," he adds.

"I've got my work cut out for me, then," dryly.

Vader ignores the man's remark; he is not in the mood for banter. "Make sure the Rebels go unharmed, especially Skywalker. Your life depends upon it," he threatens.

"Understood," his agent says.

"Very well. Do not fail me."

He ends the call and opens a new channel; he has one last order to give.

"Admiral Piett," he requests.

"Yes, sir," comes the immediate response.

"Set best speed for the Arkanis Sector."

"Immediately, my lord."

He drops the holocomm onto the table and turns to the viewscreen to meditate.

Staring unseeing into the black void outside, all Vader can perceive is his son's face, lined with deep shadow, his penetrating blue eyes like brilliant twin suns burning in the dark.

Vader has lost far too much in his lifetime not to answer his son's unconscious call.

* * *

_4 ABY, Imperial Palace, Coruscant._

Darth Sidious despises Tatooine.

Influence of the Hutts aside, it is politically and economically worthless, prone to producing individual wild cards and unexpected situations. But in the Force the planet is infinitely valuable: it has given him two apprentices, one for his present and the other for his future. They are his two most precious assets, the Skywalkers, and the ones he trusts the least out of all the sentients in the galaxy. One is growing resentful and wary after twenty long years, likely on the verge of betrayal, while the other seems given to surprising him. He doesn't like to be surprised.

Their home planet is as dangerous as it is useful. Sidious is able to influence its inhabitants easily enough through money and power, if not through the Force directly, but certain hidden aspects of the planet's Force-presence, of its place in the invisible galactic ley lines that he exploits, resist his manipulation. And because of the two powerful tools it has given him, Tatooine is too important to remain a mystery.

Therefore he will wring every last offering out of it and discard what is left.

"We must time this precisely," he tells his Hand. "I will arrive in a standard tenday. You have until then to capture Skywalker, disable Vader's agent and any Rebels or natives that may pursue you, and get offworld. Avoid injury or insult to the Hutts," he adds. "It would not do to estrange our economic allies."

"Yes, Master," she responds. "I understand."

"Good." He curves his hand around the cool metal of his throne, presses down lightly. He could destroy it with a thought, but sometimes a delicate touch is needed. Times like now. He has already begun to seduce the son of Skywalker; it will not be long before he can do away with the waiting game and come down with the full overwhelming force of his power. The future of the galaxy awaits him.

He savors the thought, and gives voice to it: "Soon I will reign unopposed."

"Yes, Master," his Hand agrees, anticipation vibrating in her voice.

"Do not let Lord Vader's agent know of my role in this game," Sidious continues, "although you may find it useful to recruit him in capturing the boy. But Vader must not know that I am going to Tatooine."

"Yes, my Master. It will be done."

"Then carry out my orders, my Hand," Sidious commands.

The holotransmission ended, he sits back and sinks deeper into the Force, extending himself into its swirling blackness. The plan is under way, but his preparations are not yet finished.

Glutted with the dark side, intoxicated with his own power, Sidious reaches across space and time to the mind of the son of the son of the suns. The boy is in effect his spiritual grandchild, his new apprentice and replacement for the father. Skywalker has already begun to walk the path of Darkness, but Sidious must solidify his footing before he can continue.

The boy is dreaming right now, which makes it all the easier. Subtly he twists the dream, just like last time and the time before that, tweaks it until the boy desires his own nightmare. Just like his father does.

Sidious reaches out to the stars and smiles as he feels the galactic lines of power quail before him.

* * *

_4 ABY, Arkanis Sector._

In the chill of the black interstellar night, Luke Skywalker drowns in his dreams.

His father is screaming.

"Father, where are you?" he cries, whirling around to catch his bearings. It's not easy, for the sky and flat arid desert stretching out monotonous in all directions are tilting and blurring, and the ground is trembling, throwing him continuously off balance. He feels dizzy-sick, salt tears stinging his eyes from the wind hazing past him.

Desperate for some relief, he turns away and keeps turning, searching for his father, tears his gaze away from the colorless indefinite horizon only to find more of it everywhere he looks; he can't seem to lift his feet. "Father!" he yelps again.

The scream doesn't stop, goes on and on and on, bouncing off the walls of his skull until he claps his hands to his ears to stop the vast pain. It feels as if the immense pressure has shattered his eardrums and he expects at any moment to feel hot blood coating his fingers. But his action only serves to magnify the distorted scream flaying his father's throat. Frantic now, he attempts unsuccessfully to stumble forward, trying to find his father.

The nightmarish scream seems to be coming from all around him, though, echoing stereophonic through the blurry tilting landscape. He trips over rough and rocky ground, blinded by the gritty wind searing his eyes. His helplessness sends cold shards of terror stabbing through his heart; tortured by the sound of his father's agony, he cries again: "Father! Where are you? Let me help you!"

As Luke shifts his balance the ground roils beneath him, almost throwing him off. He looks down.

He is standing on his father, trampling the components of the life-support suit into agonized flesh.

"Father!" he exclaims once more, this time in relief. He smiles, half hysterical, hands shaking; crouches down to stroke the sharp blade of his father's cheek. "I'm here, Father. I won't leave you. I'm going to help you."

Looking at his father relieves him of some of the dizziness induced in him by the blurred rushing landscape, so he concentrates on the man beneath him, thinks about how to ease his father's pain. He's still in some pain himself, but there's nowhere else to stand and the bloody wind is still blowing. Then the solution comes to him; _of course_ he thinks with relief. The Force caresses him, singing _Use me use me sink deeper into me_ and Luke accepts its invitation. It's obvious that this is the best way.

The blade of his lightsaber hums out, sharpening the shadows, tingeing the world blue. He doesn't sense agreement from his father, so keeping his hand on his father's face he reassures his suffering sire. "I'm going to help you, Father. It's all right, don't worry."

He breathes in Darkness, swings, and abruptly the blurred, tilted world resolves into a sharp endless wasteland.

And it is easy, easier than anything he has ever done. Father's head turns to one side as if, even in death, to thank him. His footing is steady once more and

he wakes up swallowing his tears and gasping for air.

This is not the first time he has had this dream. The details are never the same, but its essence is clear and it feels as certain as the inevitable future he sensed waiting for him on Bespin. Luke Skywalker is going to commit patricide.

"Ben," he moans in despair, "Yoda, is it true?"

Only the eerie silence of hyperspace responds. His teachers are dead; no one can help him now but himself.

"Father," Luke whispers.


End file.
